Back in the 1930's, Roscoe K. Fawcett ran a successful magazine publishing house, built primarily on the success of the post-World War I humor book, Captain Billy's Whizbang. In the late 30's, Fawcett commissioned two staff members, Bill Parker and Charles Clarence (C.C.) Beck to create an anthology book to cash in on the sudden popularity of comic book publications in the U.S. Their first creation, Thrill Comics, was published only as an ashcan, and starred a superhero called Captain Thunder. Later, this issue's contents were reworked, Thunder's name was changed to Marvel, and history was made.

The Fawcett "bullpen" had many famous artists and writers, including: C.C. Beck, Kurt Schaffenberger, Jack Binder, Bill Ward, George Tuska, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Alex Blum, John Spranger, Mac Raboy and many others. Captain Marvel's appearance in the first issue of Whiz Comics proved to be a hit, and became the only successful rival to DC Comics' popular Superman title. In fact, the adventures of Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family, including Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, The Lieutenants Marvel, and others, eventually out-sold Superman at the newsstand.

The success of the Marvel Family spawned other Fawcett superhero creations, such as Bulletman, Spy Smasher, Ibis the Invincible and Captain Midnight, all of who sold thousands of copies each month and turned into licensed properties for radio, movies and even television. This stable of characters, along with Fawcett's line of humor, romance, action and horror comics made the company extremely competitive and often ran neck-and-neck with DC Comics as the most popular and prosperous comic publishers of the 1940's. 1941 was one of the Captain's most popular years, as he not only got his own title, but also made the jump to the big screen as Tom Tyler starred in a well-received Republic serial which ran 12-episodes. A rabbit in the Captain Marvel costume, called Hoppy even became the lead feature in Fawcett's Funny Animals comic.

DC Comics, who said that the now-immensely-popular Captain Marvel resembled too much their Superman creation, filed suit against Fawcett for copyright infringement in what would become one of the most famous lawsuits in comicdom. The suit became protracted, spanning years as both companies continued to churn out popular comic books. An interesting fact is that while it is well-known that Captain Marvel Jr. and Mary Marvel both pre-dated their DC counterparts, Superboy and Supergirl, it was during this time that Superboy first appeared, in 1945. Perhaps Fawcett should have countersued on infringement grounds themselves!

During the 40's and early 1950's, Captain Marvel came into his own, with a brand of humor unmatched among other superhero titles. However, the popularity of superhero comics began to wane in the early 1950's and in 1953, Fawcett conceded and settled the lawsuit with DC out-of-court. It is reported that DC paid Fawcett $400,000 for the Marvel Family characters, as well as some other superheroes from the Fawcett stable. Others, such as Lash Larue and Strange Suspense were sold to Charlton Comics.

Fawcett remained in the magazine business for many years, but also continued to publish comics up until 1980, including the popular Dennis the Menace line acquired from Standard/Pines.

When Fawcett stopped publishing Captain Marvel in the early 1950's, they also stopped their overseas publishing efforts. England's Len Miller & Son published black-and-white reprints of the Captain Marvel adventures. The English company began reprinting Fawcett's material, it is thought, as early as 1942. At times, the company's reprints included monthly versions of Hopalong Cassidy, Tex Ritter, Rocky Lane, Lash Larue Western, Gabby Hayes Western, Tom Mix, Nyoka the Jungle Girl, Captain Midnight, Spysmasher, Fawcett's Funny Animals, Don Winslow of the Navy, as well as Master Comics, Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Marvel Family, Whiz Comics and the only title that seems to have been unique to Britain, Family Favourites Comic Weekly. These comics were published as black and white reprints with color covers, and were of varied size, quality, and length. However, in 1954, when Fawcett stopped making these available due to the lawsuit settlement, another character was born from this void.

Interestingly enough, an explanation appeared on the "club pages" of the English reprint Marvel titles. The announcement was made of the eminent retirement of the Marvels in issues dated December 23, 1953. Billy Batson and Freddy Freeman both wanted to live normal lives, "like any other boy or girl," so they "returned" their powers to the wizard Shazam. However, the article continued, the lucky publisher found "splendid chaps" to replace them: Marvelman and Young Marvelman.

By yelling to word "KIMOTA" (a variation of "Atomic" spelled backwards), Captain Marvel transformed into Marvelman (later Miracleman), with Captain Marvel Jr. becoming Young Marvelman and Mary Marvel was turned male and became Kid Marvelman. Although they retained similarities to Fawcett's original Captain Marvel, and thus, according to DC, Superman, the company remained hesitant to file another lawsuit, probably due to differing laws in England and the fact that the company didn't see them as true competition for Superman, only being available in England. The titles were published until 1963 until a revamp again brought them into the limelight in the 1980's.

DC retained the rights to Captain Marvel, essentially letting the characters linger in limbo for many years, much to the chagrin of the legion of Captain Marvel fans. In part 2 of this column, we will look at the Marvel Family's rebirth at DC, and their impact on the comic market of the 1970's and 80's.